MODERN PROGRESS IN HORTICULTURE. 



139 



of a kind, and only the best and most useful or profitable kinds or sorts 

 are grown. The mixed-muddle orchard or fruit-garden has gone the 

 way of the mixed-muddle shrubbery and plant-houses, and so far there 

 certainly have been progress and improvement also during recent years. 



There have been revivals, too, in the garden ; sun-dials and quaint old 

 urns of lead or stone are being introduced to many brand-new gardens — 

 "old wine in new bottles"— and not always of good taste or right 

 proportion. Instead of the old moats for protection, and fish or stew ponds 

 for food on fast days, we have Water-lily pools or tanks and canals, and 

 we have borrowed the old gazebo or pergola from Italy, not for our Grape 

 vines, but for Honeysuckle, Clematis, and rambling cr climbing Roses. 



Hedges of clipped Holly, Box, Yew, ol- Cypress are being again used for 

 shelter in place of walls, and I may add that Levens and Elvaston must 

 lcok to their Laurels or other old formal trees, for there is a marked 

 revival in the shape of corkscrew-twisted and poodle-clipped evergreens. 



Even in garden literature there is progress, thanks in the main to 

 photography and process blocks — and may I add competition ?— since we 

 now have a baker's dozen of weekly (and "weakly") gardening news- 

 papers where we formerly had only two or three. There are, or are to 

 be, revivals in our craft literature also. For some years all the nice old 

 gardening monthly magazines with coloured plates (if we except the 

 "Botanical Magazine") have been dead and almost forgotten, but a 

 revival has taken place in the shape of " Flora and Sylva " which 

 Mr. W. Robinson has recently taken in hand. 



I may be allowed to say that with all our many horticultural papers 

 there appears to me room for at least one more. None cf us can read 

 everything of interest now published in the numerous papers and books 

 devoted to gardening in all its many phases, and I think there is ample 

 room cr scope for a weekly digest and index of all they contain. Such 

 a paper, or let us say horticultural register, well done and of a con- 

 venient size for binding would be a great boon to us all. 



Just a word about the gardeners of the future, the young men or 

 journeymen of to-day. I hope they will see and note the signs of the 

 times, and get a sound training in the cultivation of hardy plants, alpines, 

 aquatics, flowering or evergreen shrubs and trees. Never were gocd 

 kitchen gardeners and fruit and vegetable growers mere in request than 

 they are to-day. Our present-day young gardeners and probationers have 

 a strange yearning to be " under glass," and so they often obtain an 

 unequal or one-sided training. These men often fail when they obtain 

 all-rcund situations where outdoor gardening is thought to be as import- 

 ant as or even more so than that in the glasshouses. Of the many young 

 men I have had through my hands I have usually found the outdoor 

 students more successful when they left me and went to other places 

 than were these who preferred to potter about under a glass rcof. Young 

 men now-a-days have advantages quite out cf the reach cf men who started 

 twenty or thirty years ago. There are books and illustrated papers, 

 lectures, classes, and technical schools or institutes in all large towns 

 and in many of the villages throughout the country. Knowledge is in 

 these days obtainable by all, and knowledge is not only power, but profit 

 and pleasure as well. 



